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Wednesday, 5 August 2015

Advice On What To Do After Year 11!

Hello everyone,I have a school post for you today about deciding what you want to do after year 11! I feel as if I have chopped and changed about 50 times deciding wether I want to go to college or sixth form. However I feel as if I have made a final decision, and thought I should share this with you, if you are undecided with your options this may be able to help. I am basing this around college and sixth form but you can adapt this to your situation/options.

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Pros and Cons - For me this has helped every time I have sat down and thought about my options, I went and done a pros and cons list every time! I honestly have to tell you this has helped so much, I have downloaded apps, just type in 'Pros and Cons' into the app store. When you are doing this you have to be honest with yourself, I am going to add my pros and cons list down below this so you can see what I have been thinking.

College pros

College cons

Sixth form pros

Sixth form cons

Relaxed atmosphere

Less universities access Btecs

Staying in my comfort zone

More stress

Meet new people

May change my mind doing business

Stay with my best friends

Focusing on more than one subject when my main in business

New surroundings

Leaving

More experiences

Not being able to work as much (Job)

Focus on my main subject

More universities accept a-levels

Less of a social life

More time for a social life

Know the teachers

More time to get a job

Stay with some friends

No stress finding clothes

Work experience

As you can see by doing this in a table you can clearly see that I have more pros to college then I do to sixth form. While your doing this I would recommend doing this by yourself, so you can think of your thoughts, instead of having help because everyone may feel different about what your thinking. Also think of your situation and your end goals.

Think of your end goal - As I mentioned above you need to focus on your end goals. If you want to go to University this may affect your decision interlay because some universities don't accept a Level 3 diploma (College qualifications), but some universities do so with this in mind you need to research what you want to do at university as well as what universities your interested in which accepet your college qualification. For example my top 3 universities I am looking at are Manchester Metropolitan, Brighton and Westminster and they all accept my college qualification.

If you don't know what you want to do at university, that's ok you have two or less years to decide that, but if you have a idea on what job then go onto this website (Link), Prospects offer advice on jobs, school and further education. If you have job in mind have a browse on this website to see what qualifications you may need, then adapt this to university degrees.

What's best to you? - When your deciding what to do this is the main question you need to keep asking yourself! If you struggle with stress a lot maybe sixth form may be too stressful for you? if your better at exams college may not be for you, as it's coursework based? What I keep saying to myself is, the fact that I know what my future goal is (Business) so why would I make it harder for myself doing 2 extra subjects which aren't going to benefit me? Also if you can take an easy route (College) and still end up with the same goal being university, why would you put more stress and pressure on yourself?

School situation - This is key for me because my secondary school wasn't the best time with teaching and learning, as they did make learning hard a few times with teachers leaving etc. I had to keep this in mind because sixth form at this school may not be any different, I needed to escape while I could.

Teachers and friends - The biggest amount of advice I can give it not to follow in the footsteps of your friends, and don't stay their because of some teachers they could leave! Youneed to pick what's best for you and you 'end goal'.

Talk to everyone! - Get as much help as you can, with this in mind you need to talk to as many people as you can especially friends and family because they know what you want to do in the future. If your not too comfortable with talk to friends and family, then think about talking to someone from Youth Connexions, or try and talk to some teachers your comfortable talking to.